1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to digital switches and digital switching systems used in telecommunication networks. More particularly, the present invention relates to the access, viewing, and modification of data output by digital switches/switching systems for diagnostic, maintenance, and other purposes.
2. Background
Modern digital switches and digital switching systems such as the widely used 5ESS® (a registered trademark of Lucent Technologies, Inc., the assignee of the present invention) are responsible for efficiently switching large volumes of telephone calls and the likes. Such switches are used in and between a variety of telecommunications systems such as Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTNs), Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs), and mobile telephone networks, to name a few.
For a variety of reasons such as diagnostics, field testing, and software maintenance, digital switches such as the 5ESS® output and store a database of raw data which keeps track of switch hardware changes, switch software changes, switching activities, and responses to testing, troubleshooting routines, new product installation, and other things.
Prior art switch data retrievers require that users retrieving switch data have extensive knowledge about the particular switch database involved by being proficient in the special query commands peculiar to the switch database. For example, the 5ESS® switch outputs Recent Change and Verify (RC/V) data which when using prior art methods must be accessed one entry at a time using the RC/V screens. Alternatively, a group of RC/V screen data can be downloaded into a large text file through which the user must sift.
Direct access to the RC/V screens requires knowledge of a large number of access keys, of which the user may not be familiar, or as a substitute, a user must execute a large number of time-consuming query commands to identify such keys. Such keys may vary from switch database to switch database and depend on many factors which may not be familiar to the user, including the data provisioning of the particular switch.
What is of great interest but heretofore unavailable, is a user-friendly switch data retriever with rapid switch data access, and which is not dependent (on the user's end) upon the peculiarities of the particular switch database involved.